About BN
Barisan Nasional (the National Front) is Malaysia's oldest surviving political coalition. It was registered in 1973 as the successor to the Alliance Party, the UMNO-MCA-MIC pact that had governed since independence in 1957, and it broadened that arrangement by bringing in former opposition parties after the 1969 general election.
Its organising principle is communal power-sharing: component parties represent distinct ethnic constituencies and negotiate seat allocations among themselves rather than competing with one another. UMNO, drawing on Malay support, has always been the dominant partner and supplies the coalition's chairman; the MCA and MIC have historically spoken for Chinese and Indian Malaysians.
Barisan Nasional governed Malaysia without interruption for 61 years, the longest continuous rule of any elected coalition in the world, until it lost the 2018 general election. Several of its Borneo components left in the aftermath, and it has since contested elections as one bloc among several rather than the presumptive party of government.
Background compiled by MyPoliticians. Reference
